Google released the Android Developers Challenge judging application today. After installing the app, random applications are downloaded to your phone in order to let you review them. The voting application sends a message to your notification bar when an app is ready to be installed and another message reminding you to score the app.

Users score the applications in the following categories:

Originality of concept

Effective use of the Android platform

Polish and appeal

Indispensability

Google will use the community votes to calculate which apps will advance to the second round.

The twenty (20) Entries in each category with the highest scores (for a total of 200 Entries across all categories) will be determined to be “Qualifying Entries” and will advance to the Second Round. If any category does not contain at least 20 Entries, all Entries in that category will advance to the Second Round. In the case of a tie,a panel of judges selected by Google will determine the Entries, from among those that are tied, that will advance to the Second Round.

The first round judging will end sometime in October and the winners will be announced in November when the second round judging is over. It will be interesting to see how the community scores the apps since most are a month old and the developers are not allowed to update them with any bug fixes or new features.

If anyone stumbles across a really cool app, leave a comment and let us know about it.

Taylor is the founder of Android and Me. He resides in Dallas and carries the Samsung Galaxy S 4 and HTC One as his daily devices. Ask him a question on Twitter or Google+ and he is likely to respond. | Ethics statement

I have been either extremely disappointed by the apps I have gotten, skipped because they were completely useless to me, or skipped because I didn’t think the permissions were appropriate for the type of application.

The problem I see with this way of reviewing apps, is some of them really need to tested over a length of time, i.e. at least a few days.
However if you are itching to test out new apps you need to review and uninstall to get the next one. I think people are going to skip a lot of potentially great apps because they don’t have instant appeal.

That is so true! If I didn’t get a text message, I never would have ranked DriveSafe.ly well. Question, Are a lot of these apps availible on the normal store? I think the one I reviewed is, cuz I went and got it.

That is so true! If I didn’t get a text message, I never would have ranked DriveSafe.ly well. Question, Are a lot of these apps availible on the normal market? I think the one I reviewed is, cuz I went and got it.

Always Prompt looks interesting. It syncs with your calendar and calculates the distance from your current location to the location of your appointments. It may not be original but it is definitely helpful and polished. I haven’t checked the market for it yet.

We submitted Todoroo – a mobile mentoring app which informs your todo list with input form coaches, experts and friends. We are still refining our APIs before we release it to the market.

I have been either extremely disappointed by the apps I have gotten, skipped because they were completely useless to me, or skipped because I didn’t think the permissions were appropriate for the type of application.

The problem I see with this way of reviewing apps, is some of them really need to tested over a length of time, i.e. at least a few days.
However if you are itching to test out new apps you need to review and uninstall to get the next one. I think people are going to skip a lot of potentially great apps because they don’t have instant appeal.

That is so true! If I didn’t get a text message, I never would have ranked DriveSafe.ly well. Question, Are a lot of these apps availible on the normal store? I think the one I reviewed is, cuz I went and got it.

That is so true! If I didn’t get a text message, I never would have ranked DriveSafe.ly well. Question, Are a lot of these apps availible on the normal market? I think the one I reviewed is, cuz I went and got it.

Always Prompt looks interesting. It syncs with your calendar and calculates the distance from your current location to the location of your appointments. It may not be original but it is definitely helpful and polished. I haven’t checked the market for it yet.

We submitted Todoroo – a mobile mentoring app which informs your todo list with input form coaches, experts and friends. We are still refining our APIs before we release it to the market.